Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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The TRACECA Secretariat depends much on national coordinators and seems to have
developed few links directly with transport operators in each country. The appointment of
national coordinators mirrors political changes in the member states and while Azerbaijan has
had one national coordinator, Georgia has been represented by about ten different persons
and Romania by six. Armenia and Tajikistan changes less often and most country’s national
coordinators over the years are about five.
According to Abbasova (2016) TRACECA has received 187 M€ in EU funding over the years.
The EU funding has mostly been spent on some 70 Technical Assistance Projects (TAPs),
typically performed by large European consultancy firms, but since two years there are no
more funding and thus no on-going TAPs (Ciopraga, 2017). EU has also issued an investment
manual (Ehrlich et al., 2012), hosted two investment forums for TRACECA member states and
International Financial Institutions (IFIs). So far 31 investment projects have been approved
based on the TRACECA feasibility studies.
The halt in EU funding is of course a big problem. TRACECA’s Secretary General has
approached the European Commission’s DG Neighborhood and received polite responses but
no commitments, implying that the EU now wants to see TRACECA member state actions
based on the funding of TAPs.
The TAPs resulted in “books” and TRACECA now needs to act on the content in those reports
(Ciopraga, 2017). This emphasizes the need for long-term continued funding to realize the best
results from the extensive and expensive corridor studies. The secretariat has a staff of
approximately ten persons, experts in land transport, maritime and legal issues. The national
coordinators have two annual meetings and an annual workshop/meeting is held at minister
level. At present the TRACECA member states fund the work of the secretariat (office rent,
staff, national coordinators and the three annual events) (TRACECA, 2005) and the fee is
60 000 € per year and country (Ciopraga, 2017). In addition, the member countries assist with
studies.
At the moment, the main contribution from the TRACECA Secretariat to member states are
continued work along the plans drawn up in the TAPs, its feasibility studies and priorities
helping the member states in their discussions with IFIs (Ehrlich et al., 2012, TRACECA, 2014).
For instance, the roadmaps and action plans from the LOGMOS project (Egis International and
Dornier Consulting, 2014) are now implemented, however at a slow pace.
Regarding governance, the success of TRACECA is limited by the lack of institutional power.
The secretariat can only ask the member states “politely” to conform and TRACECA has no
priority over other multinational corridors in the member states’ infrastructure planning. The
secretariat has requested an arbitrage role to solve disputes, but member states have refused.
The country coordinators have enough competence to solve their tasks and they are helpful
and Ismayil (2017) finds that dissemination among TRACECA member states works well.